My Support Forums - View Single Post - Quitting antipsychotics

Sometimes psychotic · Jun 20, 2014, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypnopompp

I've read online about Spiritual emergency and getting off antipsychotics. I thought about saving some money and renting a cabin by a lake for two months on the next summer to withdrawal, and to see if it's even possible.

My first psychosis was in 2009 and the second, when I tried to quit my meds, in 2011. So I've been on meds for 5 years. Now I'm taking Zyprexa, Abilify, Risperdal and Lamictal for this Bipolar/Kundalini/whatever-you-wanna-call-it - "disease".

What is probably going to happen is I'm going to go into psychosis, but I've read that it's possible to go through it without the medication. I hope it's true!

Living with antipsychotics, I fear for my health in the long-term, and feel like I've got nothing to lose in the matter. If I totally fail and have to go to a psych ward for a month to go back on the meds, at least I know I gave it my all.

I feel a bit sketchy staying in a cabin though, most likely by myself, for two months, but that seems to be the only option. Someone in my family is probably going to bring me food when I run out, but I really don't want to get them too much involved. I still believe I can do it, with willpower.

Can anyone who's quit antipsychotics give me any advice or share their experience? Thanks!

I'm 8 months off...I tapered with my pdoc...I was only on one med abilify we cut it's dose by 1/4 my initial dose every 6 weeks. Doctor recommended to do this during a stress free time...if things get bad you can always go back up and try again later. So yeah even perfectly healthy people can become psychotic from rapid withdrawal of antipsychotics and it's not like you just snap out of it one morning....it gets progressively worse left untreated...so to give you an idea we initially cut my dose by half...it was way to fast for me...I have never felt so overwhelmed even when psychotic....the level of irritation I felt was unbearable as was the anxiety...after 2 weeks I went up to an in between dose ie from 5 to 7.5 and originally 10 mg...was stable on that an afraid to try going off again for quite some time. So if you want it to work instead of getting scared and going back on after some point of time where you aren't getting better...taper....slowly on med at a time...